


a backwards kind of love

by Crollalanza



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alcohol, Beginnings, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-03
Updated: 2016-12-03
Packaged: 2018-09-06 06:26:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8738293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crollalanza/pseuds/Crollalanza
Summary: Victor decrees that he’s here to coach Yuuri – that together they’ll win gold. But Yuri snaps that Victor gets bored easily, that he wants his life to be a constant surprise. 
What is there in Hasetsu – the most predictable of towns - to hold him?





	

**Author's Note:**

> Canon compliant, and spoilers up to episode seven.

It was a backwards kind of love. One-sided from the start, a blush of emotions, stuttering words, and a complete inability to ask any questions, or even raise a smile when Victor Nikiforov was near.

All encompassing.

A backwards kind of love that began with pixels on a TV screen and a longing. A wish he could glide and dance and garner cheers; screams as he took a low swooping bow, and the high-pitched, aching cries when he scooped up a particular toy or a rose laying at his feet.

Love starting with the dizzying heights of a boy yearning to set the world aflame. Reaching for a prize Hasetsu couldn’t give him. A love he tried to emulate. And failed.

At twenty-three, when his idol smiles and asks far too kindly if he wants a photo, the offer of a souvenir, an instantly forgettable, frivolous selfie, grinds his crush, and any semblance of self-worth to dust.

_He thinks I’m a fan. A tourist. A nobody._

Yuuri’s heart shatters at the triviality and his insignificance, but he doesn’t cry. That part of him is gone. It wasn’t that he’d wanted to be with Victor, but he’d yearned to be that abstract, the definitive beauty at its height, spinning the world in circles.

He mends. His heartbreaks always mend, but _this_ escape leaves a veneer, which hardens and strengthens the glass of his heart.

Back in Hasetsu, he believes he’s shatterproof.

 

He won’t skate again – not in competition. He’ll save his dance for the dark, private moments, where no one can see and he can fill the voids shading his life with make-believe lovers, and a thirst he’s never managed to quench.

It’s _his_ programme, because _he_ was the only one Yuuri thought about emulating, and yet it’s not the same. There’s none of the arrogance - hesitation and desire vie for supremacy as he leaps and spins. When he skates, it’s for joy not marks, and it’s Yuuri at his best, a best no one has seen. That he can only perceive if he squints.

It’s odd, but he used to feel when he skated that he was watching himself out of the corner of his eyes and if he turned to see then the vision would vanish, the ice would melt under his blades into a swirling current and he’d drown in the riptide.

 

***

Victor is full of hugs and enthusiasm. For everything. The hotsprings, the bars, the ice palace (NINJAS!) food, drink, sake, blossom dying before it can drift, and the warmth of the Katsuki family, ( _pleased to have you here, Victor-san_ ).

He wants to eat at every cafe, drink all night, dance and sing and take no care because he’s free, he’s free, he’s free.

Being in Hasetsu is much like love, he reasons late one night. Wanting to touch all the time, to be together, and if not, be thinking about being together. The giggles and touches, the sly looks and side glances, the lightness of heart and extra heat in his chest.

He lived his childhood on the ice, his teenage years were spent striving for perfection, and adulthood living his dream. The reality of the humdrum took a back seat in the ice castles of his world.

“Why are you here, Nikiforov-san?” Minako asks him.

There’s a vodka bottle on the table between them and he gestures to it with his head. “Isn’t it obvious?”

“I don’t mean the bar. Why Hasetsu? Why now?”

“Charming town,” he coos, and winks at her. “I love it. So quaint.”

“Dead on its feet, you mean,” she snarls, switching to Russian.

(He thinks at times she’s rather like Yurio, then when she straightens up, her lips pursed, it’s Madame Baranovskaya staring back at him. He flinches.)

“Why do _you_ stay?” he asks after another shot.

(She’d bought in Russian Standard vodka when he turned up, and spins the tale that winter wheat from the Steppes has been milled and fermented, distilled four times and mixed with the purest water of Lake Lagoda. He doesn’t tell her he knows she read that on the label, and he’d rather drink sake.)

“It’s home,” she mutters. “And as good as anywhere.”

***

Seeing your lover naked before they are your lover - long, _long_ before any of that is even a possibility – is the first time Yuuri’s faced his sideways slant of a dream straight on.

He drowns.

And it’s a backwards way to start a relationship, but then so is crushing on an idol when you’re ten, and not waking from that fantasy for thirteen years.

***

As she downs another shot, Minako leans over the table. Her face is a blur in the darkened bar, but her words are as crisp and clear as ice. “Why are you here, Victor?”(She emphasises the last syllable – he’s VicTaaah, now, which belies the hostility he senses when he’s near her.)

“To coach Yuuri, of course.”

“Pfft.” She slips off the hand holding up her chin. “You could coach anyone, _if_ that’s what you really want to do.”

“True, and I chose Yuuri.”

“And that’s what I don’t understand,” she says, tilting her head to one side.

“What is there to understand?” he asks. He flaps his hand, feigning boredom at the interrogation, but her eyes are scorching into him. “I saw the video. He intrigued me.”

“And you weren’t the slightest annoyed that he’d upstaged you?”

“No one upstages me!” His outrage is evident – he hopes.

Absolutely _no one_ had upstaged him, not for five years, five long and draining years, they’d not come close. Georgi had tried, Christophe had tried harder, (Jean-Jacques, he rolls his eyes, was merely _trying.)_ He could beat them all with one leg and skates on his hands.

 “Yuuri performed it better,” Minako says, her eyes round and incredulous. “And that didn’t _anger_ you?”

It’s here where he should leave because no one in their right mind could possibly compare the dances or occasions, so she has to be drunk, or else he’s drunk and can’t make out her words because her accent is too thick.

“How easy it is to skate when there’s no pressure, when you’re unobserved and not constantly assessed,” he retorts.

“I didn’t say ‘skate’,” she replies. “I said perform.” She repeats the word in Japanese, then Russian before returning to English.

 “Bar fly critics are the worst,” he spits.

“You know I’m right.” And she’s not laughing.

“Not that I’m at all interested in your reasoning,” he begins, propping himself up on his elbow. “But please carry on, Madame Minako.”

“That routine needed naivety and innocence,” she replies, and smirks. “Things you lost years ago, Victor-san.”

_Fuck you,_ he wants to say, but it would crack the mask.  So he smiles, instead. He won’t tell her she’s right, cannot say that those are the very reasons he’s drawn to Yuuri, that his lack of any worldly knowledge acts like a drug to Victor.

That he longs to wake him.

But is also terrified.

For what if Yuuri’s passion pales?  What if he becomes boring, too?

A customer has walked in and it’s apparently such an unusual event, that Minako gets to her feet, saying she’ll be there soon instead of leaving it to the barman.

“Yuuri’s stronger than he believes,” she says. “You won’t break him.”

“I wouldn’t want to,” he snaps.

“But you think you will.” She pours him the last of the vodka. “Everything mends, but you can’t make an omelette –” She laughs. “You can’t make vodka without mashing the wheat, Vicchan.”

***

Declaring you’re in love with someone before you actually are, is a backwards way to begin a relationship. But on the ice, as Eros plays, Yuuri knows this is the only way to hold him. There’s a distance in playing a part, a distance he can use to enthral.

Yuuri’s no longer silently screaming for Victor to notice him, for when he skates, it’s the only thing Victor is aware of. And all Yuuri can think of is the blue chips-of-ice eyes, assessing his every move.

Off the rink, he assumes they’ll spend time apart, and he can cope with that, except, except, except ... Victor declares that he wants to spend time with him.

That’s never happened before. Phichit was the best of roommates, but he loved exploring, excited by life, while Yuuri preferred quiet away from the circuit. Even with Yuko and Takeshi it was a friendship born through the commonality of skating.

Because everything in his life was geared towards ‘ice’ and ‘dance’ and ‘Yuuri’s big chance’. Then he flubbed that, returning to try and find whatever it is he needs to ‘unflub’ his life.

 

They’re by the sea, looking out across the ocean, and Yuuri wonders if there’s an ulterior motive because Victor is quiet – for once. He’s not babbling about the amazing food he tried today, or enthusing over a market stall and a collar for Makkachin he simply _has_ to buy. He’s not talking at all.  So this must mean he’s about to break it to Yuuri that he can’t stay and Hasetsu’s lost its charms. He’ll apologise profusely, maybe touch him on the chin, stare down at him with his icy eyes and say he made a mistake, that it’s Yuri he needs to mentor.

Yet Victor’s smiling, completely at ease as the waves crash below them and he breathes in the heaven-sent, honest salt air.  The wind ruffles his hair, exposing that most perfect of profiles to Yuuri’s view.

And something in him aches again. But he can’t think of that now.

Except  ... _Victor’s never been backwards in coming forwards, and what if he did mean lover and not girlfriend?  And what do I do if he wants more? If coaching isn’t the reason he’s here and he’ll only stay if I –_

He draws his knees up to his chest, remembering the girl who tried to get close. A friend he’d lost.

Victor doesn’t kiss him. His fingers, which Yuuri half hoped half dreaded were inching towards him, instead twine themselves in the knots of Makkachin’s coat.  Yuuri stares out to the sea and something in his shoulders, some weight, lessens.

“What do you want from me?” Victor asks.

And he doesn’t know. He can’t figure it out. Not yet. Because all he can see is the emptiness behind him and the chasm in front of him. If it would freeze over, then he could skate, but Victor’s smile thaws through his escape.

Sometimes in the dark of night, Yuuri feels as if there’s a rope bridge stretching across the void of his life, and if he’s brave enough, then he might make it over to the other side. Victor’s there, steadying the bridge, edging closer, matching step for step with his hand outstretched to lead him onwards.

A backwards kind of love that started with a crush on someone he’d never met, and ended with the promise of a souvenir. The sort of love that sparked back inexplicably, and yet was different. In Hasetsu, some of Victor’s diamond-ice shine dulled. He became warmer, sillier, human.  

 

He talks about the audience, and the need to entertain.

“You need to act, Yuuri,” Victor beseeches.

All the hugs and touches, fond looks and whistles are part of this performance.

_Eros, our Eros sculpted from ice._

Christophe Giacometti isn’t subtle, and gossip abounds.

_It’s an act, just an act,_ he should tell them. Or Victor should tell them. But then, if he says the words, the rope will fray and they’ll fall back to their respective shores.

***

After the freeskate, Yuuri, still in shock, mutters, “Did you _only_ do that to surprise me?”

And he bites his lip (the lower lip still tender from the crush of a kiss) because he doesn’t want the answer. Victor lives for surprises, Yuri had told him all those months ago, and this is just one more surprise to stave off the boredom.

As he unlaces his skates, Victor smiles up at him. The blue of his eyes have become as warm as the summer sky. “To make vodka, Yuuri, you have to mash up the wheat.”

“Am I supposed to understand that?”

He shakes his head. “Something Minako once told me.” Reaching out,  he touches Yuuri’s cheek, icy fingertips on a face not just flushed from exertion. “You’re awake, now.” And then he laughed, a small chuckle, but rich and melodious. “And so am I.”  

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed this story. 
> 
> I love Yuri on Ice and Victuuri so very much, and I want to write more, but it's so hard sorting through all the ideas buzzing in my head. If you want to yell at me about YOI then feel free!


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